REFLECTIONS

By Lorraine Ryan

 FOR DAD…………….JULY 25, 2007

 
REFLECTIONS

By Lorraine Ryan

 We are gathered here to celebrate the life of my father, John Meehan. While we will always miss him, we must remember to keep his spirit and his love alive in our hearts and minds. Simply put, death is not strong enough to erase our love for him and has no hold on each of our unique and varied recollections of him in our lives.
If I had to use one word to describe my father…. to explain what he was about…to help you to understand what was most important to him above anything else, it would be “FAMILY.” The love he had for his family was fierce and never did any of us doubt for a moment how much he loved us, as a husband, a father, a brother, a grandfather, a great-grandfather, an uncle, a cousin, or a friend. His desires and dreams weren’t full of money or travels, but to spend time with his family. This was his greatest joy.
In fact, I can’t think of any time he was happier than when he was surrounded by as many of us family as could fit into a room. We were his life and his love.
He worked hard to provide for his eventual family of four, sometimes working three jobs if that’s what it took.
It’s during the times we confront death that we pause to reflect and I’ve come to realize that while my mother is the heart of our family, my father was its soul. Why does it take us so long to realize the obvious?
The last few days I’ve plowed through mountains of photographs and among smiles and tears, I did see the obvious. What a beautiful family we were! And how handsome and vibrant my father was! So many snapshots full of love and beauty, always there, but now it is so apparent that we were blessed with the absolute miracle of perfect, ordinary days. And not one of them included a trip to Paris or Disneyworld.
Our trips were to beaches, sometimes clamming, to cottages and lakes. My father’s famous two-day trip to Nova Scotia when he added 800 miles or so by misreading a map became an adventure, never a wrong turn because I don’t think he believed in wrong turns. All six of us climbed in our 55 blue Chevy with Dad at the helm and we had a journey full of impromptu picnics in fields and gentle nights, sleeping in our car by the ocean. And what was the destination…to visit family, of course.
 Some pictures showed Dad and his brothers working and playing at being pig farmers, or him tending his garden. But so many pictures are just of family…birthdays, anniversaries, everyday visits that become celebrations by the fact of our coming together. What a wonderful, perfectly ordinary life!
I remember the sparkle in my father’s blue eyes and his playful smile. As a trucker, he felt compassion toward strangers he’d happen across with car troubles, often stopping to lend a hand to fix a flat tire. His curiosity over life and people, his sense of humor and ability to laugh in good times or bad shaped and changed all of us in some way.
Sure, there were plenty of times he could make us slightly crazy when his healthy smattering of Irish blood occasionally got him into trouble. But it was partly the combination of his intense blue eyes, a mischievous grin and the Irish rascal in him that caused my mother to marry him in 1943. Because they’d no money, they honeymooned at her mother-in-law’s house. She got more than a hint of his Irish rascal heritage when my father’s brothers sewed her nightgown up nice and tight and sprinkled assorted objects in between the sheets.
A few days after they’d married, he left for the Merchant Marines. Less than a year later, he came down with spinal meningitis and given little chance to survive (most of his crewmates did not). But thanks to newly invented penicillin and his plucky spirit, and plenty of devoted care from my mother, he did survive. From that moment on, my mother became his life raft and his life support.
          We often teased my father about his ability to not only survive so many serious health problems, but to miraculously rebound from them. So we dubbed him “The Comeback Kid.”
For instance, during World War II he escaped death on the USS St. Mihiel (a hospital ship); years later, he plummeted off a second story porch, fell off a horse on his first ride (but he did get back on again), and had skin, lung and colon cancer many years ago. He lost the sight of one eye and one lung, but our “Comeback Kid” would not be stopped.
          My father did develop an eccentric habit in his later years that I’ll confess to now. He was just a bit light fingered at McDonalds and other fast food chains and often came home with a stockpile of napkins, condiment packages, straws, and salt and pepper packets. None of his kids will ever have to worry about properly seasoning our food because we are set for life with thousands of little packets.
And it seems to me that he just as he managed to pilfer these little items; he also managed to steal more years from life than doctors or heaven had allotted him. With his true Irish stubbornness, he just would not leave until he was ready. .
          It seemed a cruel trick of fate for his body to survive these attacks only to suffer his mind’s slow failing. But again, he fought it as best he could and till the end, he never forgot any of his family. And more importantly, he never lost his sparkle, his ability to tease and laugh and his capacity to love. I couldn’t have received a better gift than this.
And again, although my father’s will to survive was a huge factor in his life, much of the credit has to go to my mother constant, loving care of my father. The number of times my father heard from doctors, family and friends, “John, you would not be alive if it wasn’t for Carmella” is immeasurable. Right until his last moment, she was there for him.
 

The last few years had been especially difficult ones for my father, but he never gave up. There’s a poem that reminds me of him by Dylan Thomas that I’d like to read.

“Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Though wise men at their end know dark is right,
Because their words had forked no lightning they
Do not go gentle into that good night.

Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright
Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight,
And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way,
Do not go gentle into that good night.

Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight
Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

And you, my father, there on the sad height,
Curse, bless, me now with your fierce tears, I pray.
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.”

My father did not go gentle into that good night. To the very end, his spirit, his essence, remained strong. He did rage against the dying of the light because his love for his family and theirs for him was strong, but it gives me comfort to know he is at peace and to remember that love is forever.

It also gives me comfort to have so many people tell us how important my father was in their lives and what a  wonderful man he was.

We will miss you, Dad, but we will never, never forget you.

This very poignant poem was also read at my father’s funeral.

To Those I Love       by Isla Paschal Richardson

If I should ever leave you,
Whom I love
To go along the silent way. . .
Grieve not.
Nor speak of me with tears.
But laugh and talk of me
As if I were beside you there.

(I'd come. . .I'd come,
Could I but find a way!
But would not tears and
And grief be barriers?)

And when you hear a song
Or see a bird I loved,
Please do not let the thought of me
Be sad. . .for I am loving you
Just as I always have. . .

You were so good to me!
There are so many things
I wanted still to do. . .
So many things I wanted to say
to you. . . Remember that
I did not fear. . . It was
Just leaving you
That was so hard to face.

We cannot see beyond. . .
But this I know:
I loved you so. . .
'twas heaven here with you!

This very poignant poem was also read at my father’s funeral.

To Those I Love       by Isla Paschal Richardson

If I should ever leave you,
Whom I love
To go along the silent way. . .
Grieve not.
Nor speak of me with tears.
But laugh and talk of me
As if I were beside you there.

(I'd come. . .I'd come,
Could I but find a way!
But would not tears and
And grief be barriers?)

And when you hear a song
Or see a bird I loved,
Please do not let the thought of me
Be sad. . .for I am loving you
Just as I always have. . .

You were so good to me!
There are so many things
I wanted still to do. . .
So many things I wanted to say
to you. . . Remember that
I did not fear. . . It was
Just leaving you
That was so hard to face.

We cannot see beyond. . .
But this I know:
I loved you so. . .
'twas heaven here with you!
 

Dad's favorite:
Psalm 23
A Psalm of David

 The LORD is my shepherd; I shall not want.

He maketh me to lie down in green pastures: he leadeth me beside the still waters.

He restoreth my soul: he leadeth me in the paths of righteousness for his name’s sake.

Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil: for thou art with me; thy rod and thy staff they comfort me.

Thou preparest a table before me in the presence of mine enemies: thou anointest my head with oil; my cup runneth over.

Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life: and I will dwell in the house of the LORD for ever.